


Never Coming Back

by QueenofDuctTape



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Book 7: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, F/M, Family, Gryffindor Common Room
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-11
Updated: 2019-12-11
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:14:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21752065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenofDuctTape/pseuds/QueenofDuctTape
Summary: This fic was written for Weasleys, Witches, & Writers Facebook group’s Flash Comp. My chosen main character is Ginny, and the prompt for this Edition was Common Room.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley
Comments: 7
Kudos: 30
Collections: Weasleys Writing War - Flash Comp Edt 1





	Never Coming Back

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by [WeasleysWitchesWriters](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WeasleysWitchesWriters/pseuds/WeasleysWitchesWriters) in the [Weasleys_Writing_War_Flash_Comp_Edt_1](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/Weasleys_Writing_War_Flash_Comp_Edt_1) collection. 



> I do not own anything in the Harry Potter universe.
> 
> Thanks to everyone who participated in this contest, the admins for putting it together, and thanks especially to all of the voters! This fic won Best Use of Theme in the comp and I am so glad you all liked it!

  
**4 April 1998**

* * *

Confirming she had packed everything, Ginny Weasley closed up her trunk and was about to haul it out of the portrait hole when she paused and looked back. The Gryffindor common room felt just as much like home as the living room of the Burrow. Somehow it held memories of all six of her brothers, despite the fact that she had only ever attended Hogwarts with four of them. 

_ Bill.  _

There was the cozy armchair by the fire that Bill had told her about before she even started at Hogwarts. She always claimed it when she was missing her oldest brother the most. Of course, it was pretty comfortable and at the perfect distance from the fire, so it was a pretty popular spot. She didn’t get a chance to claim it much in her first few years at Hogwarts, but during her fourth year she started kicking other people out of it when she wanted to sit there. By that point, younger students were scared of her because she was older, and a Weasley to boot. And the older students were all in the D.A. and had seen her Bat Bogey Hex, so they knew not to mess with her when she was in a mood. 

During her third year, she had been dozing there when a noise startled her so abruptly that she fell right on the floor. She had bruised her elbow, but while she was on the floor she noticed that Bill had carved his initials in one of the legs with a quill. Later that night she snuck back down to the Common Room after curfew and carved her own initials in one of the other legs. Now it was their chair. 

_ Charlie.  _

Ginny was almost six years old when her brother Charlie became the Seeker for the Gryffindor Quidditch team. Some of her earliest memories were of him teaching her to fly, and of the inevitable falls that he patched up himself because according to their mother’s rules she was supposed to be “just watching”. She always argued that she could see better from her own broom, and Charlie was a big softie, so he agreed. 

There was a window seat hidden sort of behind the staircase to the boys’ dorm that Ginny found her first year at Hogwarts. If you sat at the far end of the window you could just see the Quidditch pitch in the opposite corner. It was one of the less well-sealed windows in the castle so the seat was usually unoccupied, and Ginny found herself retreating there during her disastrous first year when she had moments of lucidity. There was almost always a team practicing or a pick up game going on, and Ginny would sit and watch the players zoom around and pretend one of them was Charlie. Sometimes two of them were actually Fred and George, but it didn't matter. Quidditch always reminded her of Charlie. 

_ Percy. _

All of her brothers, especially those at Hogwarts, felt guilty for not looking out for her during her first year, but Percy had taken it the hardest. As her oldest brother in school and a prefect, he had seen it as a personal failure that she had been possessed practically all year, right under his nose. During her second year, Percy resolved to spend much more time with her in an attempt to somehow make up for his oversight the previous year. Unfortunately for Ginny, spending time with Percy typically meant semi-forced study sessions. There was the table they used to work at, near the corner, tucked away from the main goings-on of the common room, but not totally secluded. It was actually a really good place to study, and Ginny continued to claim the table even after Percy had graduated. Looking back, Ginny appreciated his efforts to find something in common with her, but Percy was impossible to study with. Obviously they were covering none of the same course material, and any time she tried to ask him a question, he either made her feel quite stupid for not knowing, or his explanation was so convoluted that she was left even more confused than before. Still, it was a good study table. And even if she didn’t get much studying done with him, Ginny knew that Percy sometimes even shirked his Head Boy duties to continue to sit with her. And that meant more to her than any study session. 

_ Fred.  _

To the untrained eye, the twins might have been impossible to differentiate. But Ginny had lived with them since she was born. Fred was the more daring of the two, the quicker to laugh and the first to forgive. One of Ginny's earliest bouts of accidental magic had destroyed an experiment in the twins' room. Fred had been so impressed by the explosion he taught her a charm to do it on purpose. George hadn't spoken to her for a week. 

Ginny didn't think of Fred at any one particular spot in the common room; he never stayed still long enough to pin him down. There was evidence of Fred all over the room: the stain on the carpet where he had demonstrated the Puking Pastilles and missed the bucket, the scorch mark a misfired Whiz-bang had left on the wall. There was even a knick right where she was standing by the portrait hole. The twins had overestimated how much butterbeer they could sneak in from Hogsmeade and the knick was from a corner of the case where Fred had shoved it through the entry using sheer force of will. 

_ George.  _

The younger twin was also the slower twin, the more calculating twin. If Fred was the ideas man, then George was the one who sat down and figured out how to make it work. George was patient, and a surprisingly good teacher. He had a strict policy against helping with homework, but he once spent an entire Saturday with Ginny in the library, helping her with a prank against her dorm-mates. Ginny could almost see George right at the base of the girls’ stairs, beaming at her, ready with a high five when she raced down to tell him how it had gone. 

But if she thought about it, George’s real spot in the common room wasn’t even  _ in _ the common room. No, after Fred and George left during their aborted seventh year, she knew who was responsible for sending her Weasleys’ Wizarding Wheezes merchandise. Fred might have thought about it, but George would be the one who remembered long enough to put a package together and rent an owl. George’s spot was the window behind the girls’ staircase, where he sent owls to deliver packages after dinner. George knew better than to send her things at breakfast, where there were professors conveniently around to monitor the post. George also never charged her a knut for their products. She might have felt bad, since she knew they overcharged Ron, but she hadn’t  _ asked _ for the discount. 

_ Ron.  _

Ginny had tried not to think about Ron too much this year. He was her closest brother in every way, and she missed him like a part of herself. Hogwarts just wasn’t the same without Ron’s flashing grin, or the way he showed too many teeth when he laughed. Memories of Ron filled the common room: where they hung out on the couch closest to the fire, the table where he trounced people at chess after he tricked them into playing with him. Of course, now that she was thinking about Ron, it was hard not to also think of Hermione and….

_ Harry.  _

Ginny had purposefully avoided thinking of Harry all year. The couch where she hung out with Ron almost always had Harry seated on the floor in front of him. Harry was everywhere. On the floor in front of the fire, lounging in the armchair in the corner, waving to her as he walked up the boys’ stairs, laughing at the study tables as Exploding Snap blew up in Seamus’ face for the billionth time. There was the rug with the wonky corner that she had nearly tripped on as she raced towards him after that fateful Quidditch match, and right here, where she was currently standing, was where she had thrown her arms around him and he had kissed her for the very first time. Ginny closed her eyes and tried not to think about where Harry might be now, and how long it had been since she had seen him. As bad as it was at Hogwarts this year, she knew it was worse wherever he was. 

She took a deep breath, willing the tears away and pushing the thoughts from her mind. She took one last look around the room before she left through the portrait hole. It was her sixth year, and she was leaving for the Easter holiday, but Ginny knew she was never coming back.


End file.
